Society's ChildS


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Private prison companies make huge profits from locking up children, mothers and boast about it

Corrections Corporation of America

GEO Group and CCA are making a windfall from the rise of controversial family detention centers.


The largest private prison companies in the United States are assuring their shareholders that profits are up, thanks in part to the windfall from locking up women and children in controversial "family detention centers."

"We are pleased with our first quarter financial performance, which exceeded our first quarter guidance despite incremental startup expenses incurred during the operational ramp of our Trousdale Turner Correctional Center," said Damon Hininger, chief executive officer of the private prison behemoth Corrections Corporation of America, in a press statement issued earlier this month. "Our financial performance was driven primarily by stronger than anticipated demand from our federal partners, most notably Immigration and Customs Enforcement."

According to the company's assessment, the spike in revenue was "primarily attributable to a contract at the South Texas Family Residential Center," which brought in over $70 million during the first quarter of 2016 alone—roughly double levels seen in the first quarter of 2015.

The prison-like facility is located in Dilley, Texas and holds up to 2,400 women and children. Atlantic magazine writer J. Weston Phippen reports that more than half of the people incarcerated there are children whose average age is nine.

Comment: Yet another despicable development, and a sign that corporate greed coupled with the malevolence of government "policies" has slowly but heavily turned towards the increasing enslavement of human beings in the "land of the free".


Heart - Black

Cop beats and tases teen girl for riding bike through mall parking lot, charges her with assault

officer attacks teen girl
Officer Jared Williams attacks Monique Tillman in mall parking lot.
On May 24, 2014, 15-year-old Monique Tillman and her brother were riding their bikes when they were stopped and this young girl brutally assaulted by Tacoma Police Officer Jared Williams.

Tillman and her brother had done nothing wrong, and were merely targetted by this 'public servant' because they had the unfortunate luck to have crossed paths with him.

As the duo travelled home, they cut through a mall parking lot, as they had done countless times before. However, this time, Officer Williams was in that parking lot, in his full Tacoma Police department uniform, yet off-duty, working as mall security. As the teens travelled through the lot, Williams began pursuit of these hardened criminals and accused them of trespassing.

Syringe

Pfizer puts a halt to its drugs being used for lethal injection

Pfizer
© Andrew Kelly / Reuters
There is no longer a single major US drug company from which prisons can access drugs for death penalty executions. Pfizer announced strict limits on the distributors of its drugs Friday, prohibiting them from contributing to capital punishment.

Joining over 20 other drug companies from the US and Europe, the New York-based global pharmaceutical corporation Pfizer implemented restrictions on its drugs that could possibly be used for state executions. The company cited both moral and business reasons.

"Pfizer makes its products to enhance and save the lives of the patients we serve. Consistent with these values, Pfizer strongly objects to the use of its products as lethal injections for capital punishment," a statement approved March 28 from the Pfizer website said.

Quenelle

Really? FBI director claims viral videos of police brutality lead to increases in violent crime

FBI Director James Comey
© Carlos Barria / ReutersFBI Director James Comey
The director of the FBI James Comey has said that despite not being able to offer any statistical proof, he believes viral videos of police brutality are causing a spike in felonies across the US.

Comey called it a "viral video effect," or "Ferguson effect": the officers tend to be less aggressive towards a suspect, knowing he or she might be filming them. This "could well be at the heart" of a recent increase in violent crimes, the FBI director added.

"There's a perception that police are less likely to do the marginal additional policing that suppresses crime — the getting out of your car at two in the morning and saying to a group of guys, 'Hey, what are you doing here?'" he said.

The FBI director's claim followed a private briefing on crime rates in the US on Wednesday.

Bandaid

Daesh terrorists covertly treated at Turkish hospital, non-life threatening injuries

Daesh patient
© SPUTNIK/ HİKMET DURGUNTurkish hospital secret treatment.
Four wounded Daesh fighters have been treated at the Ersin Arslan regional hospital, located in the Turkish city of Gaziantep, an unnamed source told Sputnik. They were admitted on May 5, the medical worker, who spoke on condition of anonymity, added.

One of them, named Bagur Ferhad, is an Afghan national born in 1993, the source said. "I examined Daesh fighters. They had gunshot wounds. None of them received life-threatening injuries," the medical worker detailed.

Earlier, Turkish forces opened fire when a group of foreign fighters tried to cross into Syria near Oğuzeli, a city in the Gaziantep province. Three militants were killed, 11 were injured. Four of them were brought to the Ersin Arslan regional hospital. No record of their stay has been made.

"I think that the hospital's authorities don't want the public to find out that these people received medical treatment here. Doctors and health workers working here don't want to treat Daesh fighters. Some of the doctors come from Kilis, a town that is daily shelled from Syrian territories under Daesh control," the source explained.

The Gaziantep province shares a 50-kilometer-long border with Syria. Its capital city, located less than 100 kilometers north of Aleppo, has long served as a staging post for those, who wanted to fight in the war-torn Arab country.

Turkey has long been suspected of offering medical assistance to the militants, who are fighting to overthrow Bashar al-Assad. Iraqi MP Mowaffak al-Rubaie told RT as much last December. "There is evidence that some of these high value individuals of Daesh when they get wounded in Iraq and Syria, they cross the border and get treated and operated on in Turkish hospitals," he lamented.

Cassiopaea

How some in the U.S. are preparing for the 'end of the world'

end of america
Deep inside, most of us know that something is coming. Many of us may not know exactly what it is that is heading our way, but there are millions of Americans that feel so alarmed about what they sense is on the horizon that they are taking extreme measures to get prepared. Of course the list of potential catastrophic disasters is endless - economic collapse, civil unrest, historic earthquakes, power grid failure, Islamic terror, Hillary getting into the White House, etc. There are so many things that could bring this country to its knees, and there are lots of preppers out there that are feverishly preparing their homes and their families for doomsday. But there are others that are taking very different approaches. As you will see below, some preppers have decided that the best thing to do is to run for office, while others are getting out of the United States completely.


Comment: "Islamic terror" as written above should, of course, read as "U.S. and Western-manufactured synthetic terror".


In this article, I do not intend to tell you which approach is best for you and your family. In the end, each one of us needs to do what we feel is best for those that we love. And for many Americans, that means finding a property that is "off the grid" and that is far away from large population centers. According to realtor.com, sales of prepper properties are really surging right now...

Comment: Different strokes for different folks and all that. But which stroke is yours? Are you aware enough to know that profound change is upon us? And if you are, dear reader, do you realize to just what extent these changes can and will occur? A difficult question to be sure: "What am I missing?" - if I dare ask such a question? A suggestion: When you're ready, take a moment to reflect on the distinct possibility that nothing - nothing will be the same in the near future as we now, collectively, experience the tumults, convulsions, death rattles and birth pangs of a world in rapid and drastic flux.

We at Sott are not about wishing things better so much as we are about seeing things exactly as they are - whatever they are, and acting and responding constructively to it. But to do that we must be willing to observe and understand 'objective reality' and our place within it first, and as much as possible; seeing ourselves not merely as subjects to the developments we see around us, but also as active participants; actors on a grand stage that is much larger and more complex than anything we've been led to believe - and we can't underestimate or give short shrift to the importance of this participation. Each and every one of us with everything that we think or do.

But before we can do this, we must gain knowledge of the stage.


USA

Best of the Web: Cultural insanity: Ponerized Western consumer culture is creating a demoralized man in psycho-spiritual crisis

consumer culture
© Robin Heighway-Bury/Alamy
Western consumer culture is creating a psycho-spiritual crisis that leaves us disoriented and bereft of purpose. How can we treat our sick culture and make ourselves well?

Our descent into the Age of Depression seems unstoppable. Three decades ago, the average age for the first onset of depression was 30. Today it is 14. Researchers such as Stephen Izard at Duke University point out that the rate of depression in Western industrialized societies is doubling with each successive generational cohort. At this pace, over 50 per cent of our younger generation, aged 18-29, will succumb to it by middle age. Extrapolating one generation further, we arrive at the dire conclusion that virtually everyone will fall prey to depression.

By contrast to many traditional cultures that lack depression entirely, or even a word for it, Western consumer culture is certainly depression-prone. But depression is so much a part of our vocabulary that the word itself has come to describe mental states that should be understood differently. In fact, when people with a diagnosis of depression are examined more closely, the majority do not actually fit that diagnosis. In the largest study of its kind, Ramin Mojtabai of Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health sampled over 5,600 cases and found that only 38 per cent of them met the criteria for depression.

Contributing to the confusion is the equally insidious epidemic of demoralization that also afflicts modern culture. Since it shares some symptoms with depression, demoralization tends to be mislabelled and treated as if it were depression. A major reason for the poor 28-per-cent success rate of anti-depressant drugs is that a high percentage of 'depression' cases are actually demoralization, a condition unresponsive to drugs.

Attention

3 dead in Amtrak accident in Madera County, California

train accident
© Mike Blake / Reuters
Three people died when their pick-up truck was hit by an Amtrak train in Madera County, California, just northwest of Fresno. The train conductor suffered minor injuries. No passengers were hurt.

The fatal accident took place around 1:00pm local time, when a pick-up truck tried to go around a stopped freight train on Avenue 9 in Madera County, said the California Highway Patrol (CHP), according to Fresno's KFSN-TV.

Comment: See also: Two killed, 30 injured in Amtrak crash near Philadelphia
  • Amtrak train with over 140 on board derails in Kansas, nearly 30 injured



Pistol

Psycho-nation: US 'Justice' Dept returns gun used to lynch black teen Trayvon Martin to George Zimmerman - Killer puts it up for auction

Zimmerman
Zimmerman continues livin it up in Psycho-Nation
George Zimmerman wants to sell the gun he used to kill Florida teenager Trayvon Martin to the highest bidder in an online auction.

The firearm was initially placed on a listing on GunBroker.com, and included a description written by Zimmerman, a former neighborhood watch captain acquitted by a jury in the teen's 2012 shooting death. The killing sparked a national conversation about race and "stand your ground" laws.

But around 11 a.m. ET — just as the auction was set to open — the page displayed a notification saying the "item you have requested is no longer in the system."

The firearm listed was a 9 mm Kel-Tec PF-9 pistol, and bidding was to start at $5,000. Zimmerman's post had described the firearm as "a piece of American History."

Zimmerman's brother, Robert, earlier confirmed to NBC News that the gun sale was "legit."

Eye 1

Ninth-grade teacher moonlighted as a black-market gun dealer and traded sex for A's

Phillip Smith III
© Birmingham Police Department
An Alabama teacher who allegedly preyed on female students was also a convicted felon who took a leave of absence from the school to serve his prison sentence.

An Alabama history teacher who allegedly offered A's in exchange for sex also moonlighted as a black-market gun dealer, records show.

Phillip Smith III, of Birmingham, was indicted on federal gun charges while teaching social studies in 2004. Yet the school district never knew, even as the high school instructor took a seven-month leave to serve his prison sentence.

Now the 43-year-old is facing a lawsuit from the family of a female student, who claims Smith cornered her in class and solicited sex.

The complaint also alleges Smith operated a "sex for grades" scheme that targeted children who struggled in school. Birmingham City Schools and the city's board of education, accused of negligence, are also defendants in the lawsuit.

"He kind of liked to dance around the classroom," the unidentified student told AL.com, which first revealed the creepy teach's tactics.

"My friends told me to have my boyfriend walk me to his class," the girl added.

Smith allegedly put the moves on the student in December 2013, when he was administering a history exam at Huffman High School.

The convict teacher—who was also a women's volleyball coach at the school—was later fired and criminally charged as a result of the girl coming forward, her attorney, Julian Hendrix, told The Daily Beast.

While Hendrix's client wasn't sexually assaulted by Smith, authorities allegedly found a 14-year-old girl who was, according to a 2014 AL.com report.